Irrational Choices

The authors investigated brain activity of people making choices using MRI. They found the amygdala was involved in choices. Since the amygdala is also involved in emotions, this suggests an emotional component in decision making.

The study was done to investigate the physiological basis of Framing Theory, originally described in Science (Choices, Values, and Frames.) What Tversky and Kahneman described were supposedly anomalous choices that depended on the context of a decision. The choices were not the ones expected under rational decision theory. They called the effect "framing," not only because the frame changes the way a picture looks, but because the frame is inseparable from the picture.

Tversky and Kahneman called their work "Prospect Theory." Republican political consultants, such as the late Lee Atwater, jumped on their ideas right away. Prospect Theory made sense of what those propagandists had been doing intuitively. Prospect Theory made possible training others quickly, rather than having newcomers serve long apprenticeships imitating the masters. The result was an explosion of Conservative political propaganda, and increasing successful election campaigns.

For unknown reasons, Democrats did not latch onto these new ideas until very recently. Prof. George Lakoff, a consultant to Democrats and fmr. Pres. Bill Clinton (cf. don't think of an elephant), understood the value of framing, and mentions it in his 1996 book, Moral Politics (recently reviewed here). He was not able to sell the ideas to Democrats until 2004, when they were used sparingly and without effect.

What went wrong? Democrats don't understand Wedge Politics. What the present study shows clearly is that framing works on account of emotional inputs during decision making. Republican Wedge Politics works because it appeals to the emotions. Using framing to condition "intellectual" or "rational" inputs doesn't work because it appeals to the wrong mechanism. By the time any "rational" framing effects are applied to a decision, the emotional components have already overwhelmed the process.

Consider the decision-making process as an assembly line, with different pieces of the product arriving at various joining points. The entire system that becomes the product looks, in outline, like a tree, but there is a difference. If, at an early stage, some of the parts determine the fit of parts arriving later, then it is likely that the later parts will have to be selected. (The tree is changed by which leaves it puts on.) In an auto assembly plant, for example, which frame is started down the line determines which doors, engines, etc will be assembled on it. While that process is fairly obvious, for some reason people do not understand the same thing happens in human brains. Whoever can supply the early parts of a decision assembly process largely controls the eventual result. Thus, emotional propaganda, such as Wedge Politics, beats appeals to ideology and self-interest, because it works at a deeper level. (This is another support for my "culture" hypothesis in GSQ.)

Corporate managers use exactly the same knowledge to sell their products. Car ads are notorious for their appeal to sex. Food ads appeal to the sense of comfort. Those ads are not the result of brainstorming, as often depicted; rather, they are formulated after intensive, scientific studies of peoples' minds. Corporate managers are not going to spend billions tooling up a for a new product unless they know they will sell it. Any other way is just too risky. In the real economic world, unlike the one of Adam Smith's imagination, no one takes a flier on some half-baked idea. This puts the lie to "free markets" and Capitalism.